Mystery monolith photographed on mars.

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MeteorWayne

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It's a rock.

BTW, the Daily Mail headline is highly distorted, (I'm Shocked!! :shock: ) since Buzz was talking about a monlith of Phobos (as the article says later).

And just to review, the definition of monolith...:

"A monolith is a geological feature such as a mountain, consisting of a single massive stone or rock, or a single piece of rock placed as, or within, a monument. Erosion usually exposes the geological formations, which are most often made of very hard and solid metamorphic or igneous rock."
 
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junkheap

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The one on Mars looks like it's nothing more than debris as the result of a landslide/avalanche and it penetrated into the ground.

The one on Phobos is pretty unusual, though. I hope someday we can get a closer look at it to find out how it formed or what it's made of.

Could it be ice that got extruded through a hole in the ground somehow?

Whatever it is, when we get a closer look, I'm sure we'll learn something new.
 
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CommonMan

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RATS! MeterorWayne said, it's a rock. Why can't they send a rover that can FLY. It can recharge when not in use. The satelites could spot objects then the rover could check them out. I'm sure if they put their minds to it they could build one that would work.
 
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MeteorWayne

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The minds would have no problem doing it.

The Money to do it is what ain't there.
 
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JasonChapman

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CommonMan":1bl27brc said:
RATS! MeterorWayne said, it's a rock. Why can't they send a rover that can FLY. It can recharge when not in use. The satelites could spot objects then the rover could check them out. I'm sure if they put their minds to it they could build one that would work.

Now there's a good idea a martian drone to scout the landscape from above, my clear up the mystery of other so called martian ruins.
 
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MeteorWayne

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Fine, cough up your $50 million, and get a dozen or so others to chip in, and build it an launch it yourself.

Otherwise, such missions are not in the budgets of any worldwide space agencies for the next several decades...

Wayne the pragmatist.
 
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Archer17

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:roll:
More horse manure from the woo set. I guess invoking Buzz is supposed to help sell this notion. I never understood why some folks are so quick to assume their ETI has to act like our ancients and go around building these huge "monoliths," "pyramids," or "faces" everywhere. I wonder how many woos know that Phobos' orbit is in decline. Why bother going through the trouble of building a "monolith" on a rock that is slowly spiraling to it's eventual death?
 
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dangineer

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Stanley Kubrick probably went to Mars in secret and put it there just for his amusement.
 
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CalliArcale

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CommonMan":lni48cms said:
RATS! MeterorWayne said, it's a rock. Why can't they send a rover that can FLY. It can recharge when not in use. The satelites could spot objects then the rover could check them out. I'm sure if they put their minds to it they could build one that would work.

There have been proposals to send "hopping" probes to Phobos, which gets close to what you're describing. As MW said, what killed them was a lack of funds. Some of the plans may be incorporated into the upcoming Phobos-Grunt, however. AFAIK, Phobos-Grunt isn't going to hop around Phobos, though. It will pick one site and make just one hop -- back off of Phobos so it can return samples to Earth. It was hoped to blast off this year (the Wikipedia article still claims it will), but it's not going to make the window. It will have to wait until the next window, in 2011, assuming they can pull it all together by then. (It's got a complex web of international partners, who may or may not still all be involved, and whose individual governments can all delay the proceedings by that wonderful thing called politics.)
 
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matthewota

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Nobody is listening to the scientists. They said it is a rock. Occam's Razor dudes.....

It is just a freaking rock....
 
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jim48

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USA Today, August 5th: UFO enthusiasts have discovered a "monolith" on Mars, but the planetary scientists behind the images say balderdash. Taken in 2008, the imgage from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission depicts boulders strewn across a canyon near Mars' colossal Valles Marineris. "The structure closely resembles the black monolith that appears during key moments of man's evolution in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey," suggested a report Monday in Britain's Daily Mail. In fact, "the image they have is actually oriented incorrectly and when viewed with north up, one can see it's a boulder reflecting sunlight."

I wonder what Richard Hoagland has to say about this?
 
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Archer17

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I dunno but I'll bet the farm it would have the word "hyperdimensional" in it.
 
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jim48

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Archer17":10q1qe0m said:
I dunno but I'll bet the farm it would have the word "hyperdimensional" in it.


Have you ever listened to him on Coast to Coast AM? He's pretty slick, to be sure, meaning he sounds like he knows what he's talking about, but the man is a snake-oil salesman.
 
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MeteorWayne

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jim48":31c408xq said:
USA Today, August 5th: UFO enthusiasts have discovered a "monolith" on Mars, but the planetary scientists behind the images say balderdash. Taken in 2008, the imgage from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission depicts boulders strewn across a canyon near Mars' colossal Valles Marineris. "The structure closely resembles the black monolith that appears during key moments of man's evolution in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey," suggested a report Monday in Britain's Daily Mail. In fact, "the image they have is actually oriented incorrectly and when viewed with north up, one can see it's a boulder reflecting sunlight."

I wonder what Richard Hoagland has to say about this?


ROFL, anyone who has looked at the actual image would have a hard time saying that it looks anything like the 2001 monolith. It's basically an equal sided rectangular block, while the monolith had very specific dimensions 1 x 4 x 9.
 
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dangineer

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I wonder if there would be as much pseudoscientific enthusiasm about this thing if Kubrick hadn't made 2001...
 
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zenonmars

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Well, to me it looks like a giant slice of toast.

However, to keep this discussion scientific, I shall quote Carl Sagan. (BTW, who thinks Sagan 's face should be carved into Mt. Rushmore?)

Carl said: "Intelligent life on Earth first reveals itself through the geometric regularity of it's constructions."

Of course he also said that the Face at Cydonia was like "merely seeing Jesus on a tortilla chip" (Parade magazine).

So maybe we forget Mt Rushmore, eh? :)
 
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aphh

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The question that has to be asked is how Kubrick foresaw these monoliths that are now popping up here and there in the universe? Unfortunately he is not with us to tell.

Is there a similar monolith on the Moon and Earth? According to Kubrick, certainly.
 
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MeteorWayne

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He didn't forsee anything like these. He wrote about FICTIONAL, ARTIFICIAL monoliths, not natural features such as this.

And BTW, it was Arthur C Clarke who wrote the 2001 series....
 
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CommonMan

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MeteorWayne":15zvbgx5 said:
He didn't forsee anything like these. He wrote about FICTIONAL, ARTIFICIAL monoliths, not natural features such as this.

And BTW, it was Arthur C Clarke who wrote the 2001 series....

It seems like fiction and non-fiction is a thin line around here.
 
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MeteorWayne

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It is The Unexplained:

BEWARE. THERE BE DRAGONS HERE.....
 
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dangineer

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I'm not sure who came up with the monolith idea, since ACC wrote the book in conjunction with Kubrick's movie. In my opinion, knowing Kubrick's artisitc style, he's probably the one who came up with it, but that's just conjecture.

There's absolutely no reason this thing can't be natural. There's a hexagon on Saturn's north pole for crying out loud! Geometric shapes appear in nature all the time. Statistically, there has to be at least some rectangular rocks juttiing out of a planet in this solar system.
 
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